The Underdeck

TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS OF SILENCE AND A BOY WHO DISAPPEARED WITHOUT A TRACE...

In the trench lie the remains of a murdered 11-year-old boy wrapped in a black bag. Lieutenant Bohumil "Chorosh" Kharvat, a lieutenant in the Písek crime lab, and his associate, the legless Ukrainian refugee Lev Bohdanovych Koval, know that finding the killer after more than a quarter of a century will not be easy. Especially since no stone has been left unturned at the spot where the perpetrator buried the body.

At the turn of the millennium, the local music club Paluba and the adjacent sports complex Spartak were bustling with life. Hundreds of people came and went without leaving a trace. Choros and Leo have to go back in time and step by step find out which of them might have had a reason to kill.

Every other question swirls mud and every answer has a piece of dirt in it. Is the guard who fled to Germany after the boy's disappearance behind the crime? Or perhaps a coach with an unacknowledged fondness for young boys? If Choros and Leo don't uncover the culprit in time, the truth may be lost again. And forever...

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The winner of the Ota Fink Award comes with a gripping detective story from a small town that doesn't let its secrets go to waste.